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Los Angeles Times
6 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Walt Disney will live again as a robot. His granddaughter says he never wanted this
Joanna Miller was 10 — no, '10 and three-quarters,' she clarifies — when she lost her grandfather. Even then, in December 1966, she shared him with the world. For Miller's grandad was Walt Disney, a name that would emblazen one of the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world, and come to signify uniquely American storytelling, family-friendly optimism and the creation of the modern theme park. Front-page stories across the globe announced his death, hailing him as a 'world enchanter,' 'amusement king' and 'wizard of fantasy.' But to Miller, he was just 'grampa.' She peppers stories about Disney in her conversations, often going down tangents as she recalls heartwarming moments. Such as the Christmas season when Disney, despite having access to Hollywood's most renown artists, put Miller's drawings on a holiday card. 'The bad art we were doing when we were 6 years old? He treated them like they were great works,' she says. She pauses, a tear forming in her eye. 'He was just the greatest guy. The best guy.' Miller is, to put it mildly, protective of Disney. So is the Walt Disney Co., and as Disneyland Resort's 70th anniversary in July approaches, both share a goal — to remind audiences of the man behind the corporate name. Last fall the company announced that an audio-animatronic of Disney would grace the opera house on Main Street, U.S.A., long home to 'Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln.' The new show, 'Walt Disney — A Magical Life,' will give parkgoers a sense of 'what it would have been like to be in Walt's presence,' Disney Experiences Chairman Josh D'Amaro explained at the announcement. The way Miller sees it, it's an abomination. 'Dehumanizing,' she wrote in a Facebook post that went viral among Disney's vast fandom. Calling the figure a 'robotic grampa,' she wrote, 'People are not replaceable. You could never get the casualness of his talking.' She also argued staunchly that Disney was against such mechanical immortalization. She stands by the post — she's one of the few, she says, to have seen the animatronic in the fake flesh — but also nervously laughs as she reflects on the attention it has brought her. Miller has long lived a private life, noting she considers herself shy — she declined to be photographed for this story — and says repeatedly it pains her to take a stand against the Walt Disney Co. She frets that the company will take away her access to the park, granted as part of an agreement when her father, the late Ron W. Miller, stepped down as CEO in 1984. But as Miller sees it, she has to speak up. 'He's ours,' Miller says of Disney. 'We're his family.' Most robotic figures in Disney parks represent fictional characters or overly-saturated political personalities, such as those in Florida's Hall of Presidents, which includes President Trump and living former presidents. Few speak and most are limited to statuesque movements. And unlike an attraction in which the company has full narrative control, such as a Pirates of the Caribbean, 'Walt Disney — A Magical Life' represents real life and a person who happens to have living, vocal descendants. And real life is complicated. 'When you get older,' Miller says, sometimes when things go wrong in life, 'you just start to get pissed off. And you get tired of being quiet. So I spoke up on Facebook. Like that was going to do anything? The fact that it got back to the company is pretty funny.' Get back to the company it did, as Miller soon found herself having an audience with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger. These days, Miller is in the midst of remodeling Disney's first L.A. home in Los Feliz, a craftsman bungalow owned in the 1920s by his uncle Robert and aunt Charlotte, who let Disney stay with them when he came from the Midwest. Miller envisions the house hosting events, perhaps workshops and artist talks for arts education nonprofit Ryman Arts. Its feel is of a mini museum. In the garage sits a Mercedes Benz, the last vehicle Disney owned. Black-and-white images of Disney furnish the walls, decorative 'Fantasia' dishware shares space with vintage toys in a glass-doored cabinet, and animation artwork, waiting to be framed, is laid out on one of the beds. 'I have been thinking a lot about this house and what it means,' Miller says. 'I wouldn't be here. Grampa wouldn't have met granny. This all started because people were helping out grampa. Aunt Charlotte was making peanut brittle in this house that they sold at Disneyland. So this house, there would not be Disney company if it weren't for this house.' Miller's relationship with the company has wavered over the decades. She's more excited to share memories of Disney than recall the tumultuous corporate period when her father oversaw the behemoth company. On Saturdays, Disney would often bring her and her siblings to the studio. There, they had the run of the place, cruising around the backlot in their very own mini-cars designed for Disneyland's Autopia ride. Those visits largely ended when Disney died, as her father dedicated his weekends to golf. Championing Disney, and preserving his legacy, runs in her family. Her mother, Diane, who died in 2013, was the guiding force behind the foundation of San Francisco's Walt Disney Family Museum. Miller, who long sat on the board, said the idea of creating an animatronic of Disney is not new, and was once considered for the museum. 'When we started the museum, someone said, 'Hey, let's do Walt as an animatronic,'' Miller recalls. 'And my mom: 'No. No. No. No.' Grampa deserves new technology for this museum, but not to be a robot himself.' Her mother, says Miller, 'wanted to show him as a real human.' Miller says she first heard of Disneyland's animatronic last summer, a few weeks before D'Amaro announced the attraction at the fan convention D23. The show will follow a similar format to the Lincoln attraction, in which a film plays before the animatronic is revealed. Lincoln, for instance, stands and gives highlight's of the president's speeches, doing so with subtle, realistic movements. Disney, promises the company, will be even more lifelike, with dialogue taken from his own speeches. D'Amaro said 'A Magical Life' had the support of the Disney family, singling out Disney's grandnephew Roy P. Disney, who was in the audience. Miller stresses that she does not speak for her five siblings or other descendants, but as she wrote in a letter to Iger, 'I do speak for my grandfather and my mother.' Shortly after her Facebook post, Miller was invited to see the figure and meet with Iger and members of Walt Disney Imagineering, the secretive creative team responsible for theme park experiences. 'He was very kind,' Miller says of Iger. 'He let me do my spiel.' But she wasn't swayed. She says she asked him to create a set of guidelines on how the company would portray Disney, and Iger promised to protect his legacy. 'But I don't think he has. They're different people. He's a businessman, grampa was an artist.' Imagineering and Disneyland discussed the project at a media event in April, but the animatronic was not shown, nor were pictures revealed. Imagineering did display an early sculpt used in modeling the robot to show the care taken in crafting Disney. The sculpt depicts Disney in 1963, when he was 62. One could detect age spots on Disney's hands and weariness around his eyes. Miller recalls her reaction when she saw the figure. 'I think I started crying,' Miller says. 'It didn't look like him, to me.' There are at least two Walt Disneys. There's the company founder, Mickey Mouse designer and Disneyland creator who, later in life, visited millions of Americans via their television sets on the weekly 'Disneyland' show and became known as 'Uncle Walt.' Then there's the man Miller knew, a grandfather who exists to the rest of us only via stories. Sometimes these public-private personalities overlapped, such as the moments Disney would be paraded down Disneyland's Main Street with Miller and her siblings in tow. Miller pulls out a photo showing her face buried in her lap as she tried to hide from Disney's adoring fans. Or the times fans caught Miller looking out from Disney's Main Street apartment, a place where she spent many nights as a child and that still stands today. She recalls Disney stopping to talk to people at the park. 'It was the dearest thing,' she says. He would take photos with fans and sign autographs. 'I never ever saw him not be less than tickled and honored that people loved him so much.' Imagineers argue that the two Walt Disneys are being lost to history. 'Why are we doing this now?' said longtime Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald. He cited two reasons, the first being Disneyland's 70th anniversary. 'The other: I grew up watching Walt Disney on television. I guess I'm the old man. He came into our living room every week and chatted and it was very casual and you felt like you knew the man. But a lot of people today don't know Walt Disney was an individual.' The company also says that animatronic technology has advanced to a point it can do Disney justice. Miller is sympathetic to Imagineering's arguments. It's clear she holds tremendous respect for the division, believed to have been the aspect of the company Disney held dearest to his heart. She gushes about Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the most recent major addition to Disney's original park. 'It's amazing,' Miller says. Yet she doesn't buy into the theory that the company is simply out to preserve Disney's legacy. If that were the case, she argues, then episodes of his weekly 'Disneyland' show would be available on streaming service Disney+. Worse, she worries an animatronic will turn Disney into a caricature. The robotic Lincoln works, says Miller, because we lack filmed footage of him. She wishes the company had abandoned the animatronic and created an immersive exhibit that could have depicted Disney in his park. 'I strongly feel the last two minutes with the robot will do much more harm than good to Grampa's legacy,' Miller wrote in her letter to Iger. 'They will remember the robot, and not the man.' Miller has a number of letters and emails of support, some from former Imagineers, but has crossed out their names before handing them to a journalist. Most contacted for this story didn't return calls or emails, or declined to speak on the record, noting their current business relationships with the Walt Disney Co. The legacy of Disney is 'precious yet vulnerable,' said one such source, refusing to give a name because they still work with the company. 'Isn't it honorable when a granddaughter defends her grandfather? There's nothing in it for her.' Miller says she simply wants the company to respect Disney's wishes — that he never be turned into a robot. 'In all our research, we never found any documentation of Walt saying that,' Imagineer Jeff Shaver-Moskowitz said in April. 'We know that it's anecdotal and we can't speak to what was told to people in private.' And therein lies a major hurdle Miller faces. Those who Miller says knew of Disney's preferences — her mother, her father and Imagineers he was closest to, including confidant and former Imagineering chief Marty Sklar — are all dead. That leaves, unless someone else comes forward, only her. Miller, however, is realistic. Her family's biggest mistake, she argues, was selling the rights to Disney's name, likeness and portrait to the company in 1981 for $46.2 million in stock. It leaves the family little to zero say in how Disney is preserved in the park, although Imagineering says it has worked closely with the Walt Disney Family Museum and those descendants who are currently on the museum board in constructing the animatronic show. But there's one thing the Walt Disney Co. can't control, and that's Miller's voice — and her memories. On their trips to Disneyland, Miller's grandfather was happy to stop for autographs, but he also signed — in advance — the pages of an office pad. When the crowds became a bit much, he would hand a park-goer an inscribed piece of paper. 'After 10-15 minutes,' Miller recalls, 'he would say, 'Hey, I'm with the grandkids today, and we have things to do.''
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Disney to cut hundreds of employees in latest round of layoffs
Walt Disney Co. launched another deep round of layoffs on Monday, notifying several hundred Disney employees in the U.S. and abroad that their jobs were being eliminated amid an increasingly difficult economic environment for traditional television. People close to the Burbank entertainment giant confirmed the cuts, which are hitting film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate financial operations. The move comes just three months after the company cut 200 workers, including at ABC News in New York and Disney-owned entertainment networks. At the time, the division said it was cutting its staff by 6% amid shrinking TV ratings and revenue for traditional television. ABC News shed about 40 employees last October. The company's TV stations also lost staff members. The ABC television network and Disney-owned entertainment channels have seen dramatic audience defections as consumers switch to streaming services, including Netflix, Paramount+ and Disney+. Hollywood trade site Deadline first reported the news.
Deccan Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
YouTube's victory in the TV wars depends on parents
By Jason a stat that might come as a shock to casual observers of the media ecosystem: The media company that commands the largest percentage of our eyeballs is not the mighty Netflix Inc., the Walt Disney Co. juggernaut or the omnipresent Inc. Prime. It's YouTube. The platform represents 12.4% of audiences' time spent watching television, according to Nielsen Holding Ltd.'s Media Distributor Gauge report for April. That beats Disney's 10.7% (which includes not only the platforms and channels that bear its name but ESPN and Hulu to boot), nearly doubles the 6.8% and 6.7% for Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, respectively, and pummels the puny 3.5% share for Amazon. But before we hail the platform as another nail in traditional TV's coffin, it needs to accomplish something else: earn the trust of its users, particularly are real problems with the way YouTube works and the suggestions it makes to viewers (especially younger ones). It sets the entertainment powerhouse up for the kind of backlash we're seeing against other dominant but problematic tech you're old enough to remember a pre-YouTube world or when the platform struggled through its initial era of low-res user-generated videos and one-joke viral breakouts, the idea of consuming media primarily through that portal sounds example, Gen Xers like me may use it as little more than a last resort destination: a place to find a clip from a movie that isn't streaming, an episode of a show that we forgot to DVR, the badly-dated music video for a song that was briefly popular when we were in high school or various other goofy little things that aren't substantial enough to exist anywhere I can also tell you, as the father of a tween, that this is not how younger people think of YouTube. For many of them, it (and other social media sites) is the window through which they see the world and the door though which they travel to find whatever they're seeking. The beauty of YouTube circa 2025 is that it has everything, from rentable movies to full, free seasons of television to vast musical archives to daily updates from your favorite horror of YouTube circa 2025 is also that it has everything, from unhinged conspiracy theories to casual racism and misogyny to hours-long videos of ideological indoctrination to sexually suggestive material. Its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach might not be such a concern if the platform increased efforts (aside from the most basic and easily evadable parental controls) in keeping the scarier stuff viewers are in the thrall of the platform's problematic algorithm, which exists not to enhance the quality of the user experience but the quantity of it. In December, the company reported that people watched more than one billion hours of YouTube on TV daily. That time can often be spent not on the specific video that a user is seeking out but on the videos the platform's algorithm recommends and/or auto-plays at its now, there are well-known stories of how quickly the algorithm can steer viewers toward unrelated, or even worrisome, content. A much-shared 2019 New York Times story detailed the online radicalization of Caleb Cain, who 'fell down the alt-right rabbit hole' on YouTube. A year earlier, the company's then-product chief and now CEO said that the site's recommendations accounted for more than 70% of all time spent on YouTube. (Alphabet Inc.'s Google, YouTube's parent company, did not share updated metrics when asked by Bloomberg Opinion ahead of publication.)And while it may be uncommon for the platform to function as a full-stop radicalization machine — suggesting QAnon screeds to innocent cat video connoisseurs — it's hard to find a user (or a parent) who can't recall at least one head-scratching recommendation or ill-advised curiosity parents or guardians, for example, might turn on an age-appropriate show for their kids to watch on YouTube (there's a reason 28% of the platform's viewers are aged 2-17). Maybe they need to occupy their children's attention while working from home, doing a household chore or two or perhaps just to get a mental break — only to hear or see a questionable video playing before it can be that scenario sound familiar? For at least a segment of the population, this has led to an inherent distrust of YouTube's anything-goes, Wild West approach, which is absent from the sense of curation on conventional television networks or subscription streaming it's hard to overstate the role that the platform's unruly and frequently unmoderated comments section can play in the dissemination of misinformation, to say nothing of the targeted harassment that runs rampant on both the site itself and various third-party tools. Unfortunately, the monopolistic nature of our current tech landscape means that the chances of an upstart video streaming platform replacing the ubiquitous YouTube are slim to none, even if other sites and apps (such as Vimeo, to name the most obvious example) offer a far superior user never forget, it was once hard to imagine any social media website overtaking MySpace, and user enthusiasm for Google's search engine, has cooled of late. The combination of copious ads and insipid, unwanted and frequently inaccurate AI-powered results have sullied the latter brand, at least among users who are paying attention. Some people have begun to seek out alternate web searches, just as many fled the Elon Musk iteration of a similar migration for more ethical online video platforms in the realm of possibility? YouTube should make its algorithm safer for its youngest demographic to avoid finding out.
Economic Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Economic Times
YouTube's victory in the TV wars depends on parents
Here's a stat that might come as a shock to casual observers of the media ecosystem: The media company that commands the largest percentage of our eyeballs is not the mighty Netflix Inc., the Walt Disney Co. juggernaut or the omnipresent Inc. Prime. It's YouTube. The platform represents 12.4% of audiences' time spent watching television, according to Nielsen Holding Ltd.'s Media Distributor Gauge report for April. That beats Disney's 10.7% (which includes not only the platforms and channels that bear its name but ESPN and Hulu to boot), nearly doubles the 6.8% and 6.7% for Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, respectively, and pummels the puny 3.5% share for Amazon. But before we hail the platform as another nail in traditional TV's coffin, it needs to accomplish something else: earn the trust of its users, particularly are real problems with the way YouTube works and the suggestions it makes to viewers (especially younger ones). It sets the entertainment powerhouse up for the kind of backlash we're seeing against other dominant but problematic tech companies. If you're old enough to remember a pre-YouTube world or when the platform struggled through its initial era of low-res user-generated videos and one-joke viral breakouts, the idea of consuming media primarily through that portal sounds absurd. For example, Gen Xers like me may use it as little more than a last resort destination: a place to find a clip from a movie that isn't streaming, an episode of a show that we forgot to DVR, the badly-dated music video for a song that was briefly popular when we were in high school or various other goofy little things that aren't substantial enough to exist anywhere else. But I can also tell you, as the father of a tween, that this is not how younger people think of YouTube. For many of them, it (and other social media sites) is the window through which they see the world and the door though which they travel to find whatever they're seeking. The beauty of YouTube circa 2025 is that it has everything, from rentable movies to full, free seasons of television to vast musical archives to daily updates from your favorite horror of YouTube circa 2025 is also that it has everything, from unhinged conspiracy theories to casual racism and misogyny to hours-long videos of ideological indoctrination to sexually suggestive material. Its everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach might not be such a concern if the platform increased efforts (aside from the most basic and easily evadable parental controls) in keeping the scarier stuff viewers are in the thrall of the platform's problematic algorithm, which exists not to enhance the quality of the user experience but the quantity of it. In December, the company reported that people watched more than one billion hours of YouTube on TV daily. That time can often be spent not on the specific video that a user is seeking out but on the videos the platform's algorithm recommends and/or auto-plays at its conclusion. By now, there are well-known stories of how quickly the algorithm can steer viewers toward unrelated, or even worrisome, content. A much-shared 2019 New York Times story detailed the online radicalization of Caleb Cain, who 'fell down the alt-right rabbit hole' on YouTube. A year earlier, the company's then-product chief and now CEO said that the site's recommendations accounted for more than 70% of all time spent on YouTube. (Alphabet Inc.'s Google, YouTube's parent company, did not share updated metrics when asked by Bloomberg Opinion ahead of publication.) And while it may be uncommon for the platform to function as a full-stop radicalization machine — suggesting QAnon screeds to innocent cat video connoisseurs — it's hard to find a user (or a parent) who can't recall at least one head-scratching recommendation or ill-advised curiosity parents or guardians, for example, might turn on an age-appropriate show for their kids to watch on YouTube (there's a reason 28% of the platform's viewers are aged 2-17). Maybe they need to occupy their children's attention while working from home, doing a household chore or two or perhaps just to get a mental break — only to hear or see a questionable video playing before it can be that scenario sound familiar? For at least a segment of the population, this has led to an inherent distrust of YouTube's anything-goes, Wild West approach, which is absent from the sense of curation on conventional television networks or subscription streaming it's hard to overstate the role that the platform's unruly and frequently unmoderated comments section can play in the dissemination of misinformation, to say nothing of the targeted harassment that runs rampant on both the site itself and various third-party tools. Unfortunately, the monopolistic nature of our current tech landscape means that the chances of an upstart video streaming platform replacing the ubiquitous YouTube are slim to none, even if other sites and apps (such as Vimeo, to name the most obvious example) offer a far superior user experience. But never forget, it was once hard to imagine any social media website overtaking MySpace, and user enthusiasm for Google's search engine, has cooled of late. The combination of copious ads and insipid, unwanted and frequently inaccurate AI-powered results have sullied the latter brand, at least among users who are paying attention. Some people have begun to seek out alternate web searches, just as many fled the Elon Musk iteration of a similar migration for more ethical online video platforms in the realm of possibility? YouTube should make its algorithm safer for its youngest demographic to avoid finding out. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Vulture, the Playlist, Slate and Rolling Stone. He is the author, most recently, of "Gandolfini: Jim, Tony, and the Life of a Legend."
Los Angeles Times
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Thanks, Tom Cruise and Stitch! Movie theaters have a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend
It was Saturday afternoon, and I had ditched my two young, loud kids, leaving them with my husband for a solo trip to the movie theater. There was no quiet to be had, though. When I got to the AMC theater at Del Amo Fashion Center in Torrance, the place was packed. Among the crowd: lots of kids as giddy and rowdy as my own. It was the opening weekend for Walt Disney Co.'s live-action remake of 'Lilo & Stitch.' Families posed for selfies outside the theater with a giant banner featuring the crazed alien Stitch. Inside, a long line for popcorn and candy snaked through the lobby. The premieres of 'Lilo & Stitch' and 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' powered a record-breaking Memorial Day weekend at the box office. As my colleague Samantha Masunaga reported, 'Lilo & Stitch' hauled in an estimated $183 million in its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada, setting the record for the biggest Memorial Day weekend opener ever. Not adjusting for inflation, it toppled the former top Memorial Day movie, 'Top Gun: Maverick,' which debuted with $160.5 million in 2022. Paramount Pictures and Skydance Media's 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' brought in $77 million domestically for second place, with 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' 'Thunderbolts*' and 'Sinners' rounding out the top five. The busy holiday was a relief for theater owners and moviemakers still struggling from a post-pandemic slump. The local film and TV industry has been battered in recent years by the slowdown in production wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, which made audiences more comfortable staying home to watch movies on streaming platforms, and the writers' and actors' strikes in 2023. Enter: the little blue alien and Tom Cruise, still performing his own stunts at 62. Chris Aronson, Paramount's president of domestic distribution, called the holiday ticket sales 'just an extraordinary accomplishment after so many people were willing to write off the theatrical business.' Historically, the holiday has been one of the biggest moviegoing weekends, serving as a springboard for the busy summer months. This year, the record-breaking holiday follows a solid spring. Films such as Warner Bros. Pictures' 'A Minecraft Movie' and Ryan Coogler's 'Sinners' helped to fuel domestic theatrical revenue of $875 million in April, close to the pre-pandemic average of $886 million for the same month from 2015 to 2019, Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital, told Masunaga. Disney and Marvel Studios' 'Thunderbolts*' and Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' which premiered in May, also have kept up steady business. I didn't go to see the blockbusters, though. I walked into a less-than-half-full screening of 'Friendship,' the ultra-awkward indie comedy starring Tim Robinson as a suburban dad who becomes obsessed with his new neighbor, a weatherman played by Paul Rudd. The trailer boasts a review that, in reference to another Rudd movie, calls it ''I Love You, Man' for sickos.' For an independent film, it had a good holiday weekend, bringing in $4.6 million, according to the film performance tracker Box Office Mojo. Half of my theater's audience sat quietly, and I heard one older man grumble on the way out that it was 'the worst movie I've ever seen.' The other half laughed through the actors' foraging expedition for wild mushrooms and 'adventures' in the local sewer system. I was in the latter half, whatever that says about me. My husband — a Robinson superfan who went by himself to a 'Friendship' screening later that night — met me outside the theater with our kids, who had one question: 'When can we go see 'Lilo & Stitch'?' Valerie says, 'My Happy Place a.k.a.: Santa Barbara.'Lynne says, 'Cayucos! Cool beach town in Central California!' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. Today's great photo is from Times photographer Myung J. Chung at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood where Scouts joined community members in a huge Memorial Day effort to place flags on nearly 90,000 grave sites. Hailey Branson-Potts, staff reporterKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
